Brandishing a dead-on title, Duplicity (opening Friday) feeds on and extends eight decades of on-screen romantic espionage chicanery. The spy/romance genre more or less began in 1928 with 'Spies,' which inspired all kinds of screen variations.

Out last week from Criterion, John Huston's film of Malcolm Lowery's Under the Volcano (1984, rated R, $40) earned the then-78-year-old director his best reviews in years with Prizzi's Honor still to come. It's uncommon, but sometimes "twilight" filmmakers do score biggies. Three examples:

A political thriller doesn't seem the place for family matters, but it was for two stars of Robert Ludlum's Covert One: The Hades Factor. Anjelica Huston, who plays the president, acted for the first time with half-brother Danny Huston, who plays the chief of the Covert One secret spy agency. He had previously directed her in Mr. North.

If it were up to Oscar winner Anjelica Huston, more Latin American films would be shown in U.S. theaters. "A lot of the big American films are just not as interesting to me as the ones made south of the border," Huston told The Associated Press this weekend while attending the Puerto Vallarta International Film Festival of the Americas.